Black History Month 2026

Let’s be clear: Black history isn’t “singling out” anything — it’s correcting the record.

Every time a white person hits me with, “Why spotlight your history? Why single it out?” I know they’ve never opened a book that wasn’t written by somebody who thought Black people magically appeared in 1964.

Let me help y’all goofy selves out.

Black people didn’t “single ourselves out.”

America did that for centuries — through slavery, segregation, redlining, lynching, voter suppression, and every law designed to keep us in a box. We’re barely 100 years removed from Jim Crow and the KKK marching down Washington like it was a parade permit situation. That’s not ancient history. That’s somebody’s grandma’s lifetime.

So the idea that talking about Black history is somehow “extra” is wild.

We’re not spotlighting ourselves — we’re spotlighting the truth.

Because for most of this country’s existence:

• Our contributions were erased

• Our stories were distorted

• Our brilliance was ignored

• And our suffering was sanitized to make white folks comfortable

Black history isn’t a side dish.

It’s the main course that got pushed off the plate.

And let’s be real:

If the history books had told the truth from the beginning, we wouldn’t need a whole month to fix the mess.

So yes, we highlight it.

We uplift it.

We teach it loudly.

Because pretending we’re “past all that” when we’re barely a century out from legalized racial terror is delusional.

If the phrase “Black history” makes you uncomfortable, that’s not a curriculum issue — that’s a you issue.

Dr. Mark Long